Man struggles after two separate crashes that killed people in roadway

Feb. 23--Marion Thomas has a hard time describing how he became the driver who on two occasions struck and killed a person in the roadway. The closest he gets is comparing it to lightning striking him twice.

"I can't put anything into words, it just happened to me," he said. "I had no control over any of it."

The first crash happened in June 2014 while he was driving a 2007 Ford Mustang coupe, which he'd bought just six months before.

The 50-year-old Vancouver man was on his way home from work, driving north on Highway 99 in the middle of 5 o'clock traffic. While traffic heading straight was stopped for a red light at 78th Street in Hazel Dell, Thomas had a green light to turn left, so he approached the intersection going about 30-35 mph, the speed limit there.

That's when James Grubbs, a 45-year-old Vancouver man, ran across the street, weaving through the stopped cars and into the path of Thomas' Mustang.

"All of a sudden, he just came out and bam," Thomas said. "He ran through three lanes of standing traffic. There was no way he could see me."

Thomas got out of his car and went to check on Grubbs, who had landed in the street.

"I broke down crying out there," he said. "I just knew he was dead."

Thomas said he was unresponsive when medical personnel arrived. Grubbs was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Deputies with Clark County Sheriff's Office came to the scene, and Detective Jim Payne, the traffic detective who investigated the crash, said Thomas was cooperative.

"He was a little distraught over the fact that he hit somebody, but he provided everything we asked, answered all our questions," Payne said. "Nothing struck me as suspicious at all."

Payne had Thomas give a blood sample as a way to rule out any impairment due to drugs or alcohol. The report verified that Thomas wasn't impaired.

For weeks after that, when Thomas thought about that crash, he went back and forth between sadness and anger.

"I was broken that it happened," he said. "Then again, (I'd think) 'this is nonsense. There's no reason for this to happen.' "

His insurance company wouldn't let him total the car, so he fixed it. In late January 2016, he decided to get a new vehicle, a 2014 Jeep Wrangler.

"Just to wipe that out of my life, I got rid of the car," he said. "I got a new vehicle and I'll be damned, what happens?"

Driving home from dinner on July 13, Thomas got onto northbound Interstate 5 from state Highway 14 at about 11:30 p.m.

"I was looking to get into the other lane and there he was," Thomas said. "Bam, it's like he fell out of the sky."

The man, 20-year-old Portland resident Evan Davenport, had been running in the right lane of the highway, the Washington State Patrol reported.

Thomas pulled over and sat in his vehicle on the side of the road.

"I couldn't believe it. ... I knew it was another guy. I hit another guy," Thomas said. "I just went into shock: This didn't happen. It just didn't happen. I wasn't in my right state of mind. I was sitting there thinking, 'I wasn't driving. ... Who was driving this car, where are they at, where did they go?' "

When he was questioned by police, Thomas told troopers that he was a passenger in the Jeep and didn't know the driver or where he went.

Looking back seven months later, Thomas said he doesn't know if it was denial or shock that made him lie. Eventually, though, he said that things became clear that night and he came clean.

"I said, 'I don't know what I was telling you. It's me. I did it,' " Thomas said. After apologizing, Thomas tried to explain himself. "I told him, 'You might not understand this, but this is not my first time this has happened to me. This is the second time that I hit and killed somebody.'"

Will Finn, spokesman for the Washington State Patrol, said that once troopers got to the truth, they were sympathetic.

"We did feel bad for him. ... That's a difficult thing to move past," Finn said. "This doesn't happen all the time, but then to have it happen twice ... the odds were obviously stacked against this guy. You don't expect someone to be running down the freeway."

Thomas took a field sobriety test and was evaluated by a drug recognition expert, and the results showed Thomas was not impaired, Finn said.

"We don't believe that there's anything Mr. Thomas could have done to prevent this collision," Finn said. "It's one of those unfortunate incidents that occurred."

Thomas had a rough couple of days after the second crash; people messaged him on Facebook to call him a serial killer. They told him that something was wrong with him. They told him he needed to find Jesus.

"Some people were treating me like the plague," he said. "I lost friends, I gained friends. You really find out where you stand with people."

But the hardest day came about a week after the second crash when he saw an interview with Davenport's family and learned that Davenport had suffered from mental health issues and had run away that night. His family had reported him missing shortly before the crash, Finn said.

"He was just a kid that had problems. ... He didn't know what he was doing," Thomas said. "My father had mental problems, and we had lost him one night. I felt so sorry for him. It all just hit me at once."

Thomas said he got "blackout drunk" that night and got behind the wheel of a car and crashed. No one was injured, he said, but he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of intoxicants.

"I found my breaking point that night," he said. "I regret it. I can't help that I did what I did."

Now Thomas is paying for all three crashes. In the past two years, his vehicle insurance has doubled, which may be the breaking point for his business, which requires him to drive around town.

He thinks every day about the two pedestrians he struck and killed -- when he sees people dart across the street and when he passes each of the crash sites.

And for the time being, superstition is keeping him driving in his Jeep. He said he's too scared to trade in the vehicle, should lightning strike a third time.

___

(c)2017 The Columbian (Vancouver, Wash.)

Visit The Columbian (Vancouver, Wash.) at www.columbian.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.